The Free Necessity of Divine Generation.
The necessity of Divine generation does not entail coercion or
involuntariness. Athanasius was frequently accused of this, but he consistently
denies it. He does not mean to replace free desire by compulsion, but he points
out that "that which is entailed essence is higher than free choice and
antecedes it." before, that which cannot not be does not have a source from
which it came to be. God had no beginning. He did not begin to be good and
merciful, nor was an act of His will necessary for Him to become good, for God
is Good. However, He is good not by compulsion or against His will. In
this same way God is the Father but His willing to be so, and it is impossible
to consider God not having a Son. The Father desires His own Hypostasis and He
also desires His own Son, Who is from His essence. Being is before will, and
only in will does the uncertainty of choice become possible. The generation of
the Son is a condition within Divine Life, not an action. This explains the
perfect closeness and unity of the Father and the Son. The Father is in the Son
and the Son is in the Father. The "essence of the Father belongs to the Word."
"The being of the Son is a property of the Father's essence . . . The being of
the Son, since it comes from the Father, is in the Father. And the Father is in
the Son, for that which is from the Father is the Son. He is in the Son, as the
sun is in radiance, as intellect is in the word, as the spring is in the
stream."
Therefore the Son is the "Image of the Father," the true and
"indistinguishable Image," and the "form of the Divinity" in which the Father is
known and contemplated. "As soon as there is the Father, there is also the Son."
"Since there is the Hypostasis (of the Father), then without doubt there must
also be His Image and because the Image of God is not drawn from outside, but
God Himself engenders His Image, and seeing Himself in it He s in it." "When did
the Father not see Himself in His own Image?"
This line of reasoning contains many elements of Neoplatonism,
but Athanasius manages to free Origen's concept of eternal generation from
subordinationism. Athanasius develops the idea of the Trinity as self-enclosed
and complete Being and Life, which has no relation to the Revelation of God in
the Word, and which is unconditionally and ontologically prior to any
Revelation.
The Living Unity of Divine Essence.
Athanasius bases his theology on the living unity of the Son
and Father. "The divinity of the Father unceasingly and permanently abides in
the Son, and the divinity of the Son is never exhausted in the bosom of the
Father." The Father and Son are united in the unity of essence, in an identity
of nature," and in the indivisible "identity of a single Divinity." The Son has
the Father's nature without change, and the Divinity of the Son is the Divinity
of the Father. Athanasius expresses this identity as a property or attribute, ιδιοτης. He considers that its most exact
definition is the Nicene “consubstantial,”
ομοουσιος.
This signifies more than equality, identicalness, or likeness.
For Athanasius it means the complete unity of being, the indissoluble and
immutable identity, and the absolute inseparability of the Son and the Father.
Likeness, similarity, and coincidence in definition are the results of this
unity. The concept of likeness is too weak to express this, and furthermore it
is used not of essences but of external appearances and qualities. Moreover,
this concept gives too much weight to the separateness of the elements that are
being compared. Consubstantiality means not only likeness, but identity in
likeness. "The Father and the Son are one, not in the sense that one is
divisible into two parts which compose a whole, nor in the sense that one bears
two names. On the contrary, They are two in number because the Father is the
Father and not the Son, and the Son is the Son and not the Father, but their
nature is one. The Son has been generated, but He is also God."
The Father and the Son "are two, and together form an in
separable and indistinguishable Divine unity," μονας της θεοτητος. The difference and distinction of the
Father and Son exists within a single Divine Being. Athanasius has no particular
terms to describe the three which make up the Divine unity. He never uses
προσωπον, a “face.” The meaning of “hypostasis" coincides with the meaning of ουσια for him, as it did for
the fathers of the Nicene Council. Athanasius never distinguishes them as
the Cappadocians were doing even during his lifetime. He restricts himself to
the proper names of Father, Son, and Spirit, and explains their mutual relation
by such expressions as "the One who generates" and "the One who is generated,"
"One who is from someone" and "the One from whom He is."
This leads to a certain lack of clarity in Athanasius'
distinction of the three hypostases. He concentrates his attention on refuting
attempts to divide or negate the consubstantiality of the indivisible Trinity.
In his interpretation of the Nicene formulation "from eessence of the Father,"
he stresses the internal nature of the Divine generation and being. This
expresses the "truth and immutability" of the Sonship, its "indivisibility and
unity with the Father," and the "true eternity of essence from which the Word is
generated." Athanasius refers equally to "natural generation," Sonship by
nature," and "generation from the essence."
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